


one fool, one liar

by finalizer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Hux is Not Nice, M/M, hux doesn't know what feelings are, kylo catches feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:09:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finalizer/pseuds/finalizer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love is for the weak, and the weak lose wars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	one fool, one liar

**Author's Note:**

> is Sad Kylucc a thing? it is now

Ren wakes to blaring sirens, biting cold, screams and shouts from every direction. He’s on the snow, he finds he can’t quite move, his fingertips tingle, and then he’s out like a light.

He wakes again to more noise, different this time: a distant alarm, people everywhere, all around him, poking and prodding. They see his eyes flicker open and they speak to him, they’re frantic, but he doesn’t hear a word, he’s losing against unconsciousness.

The third time, he wakes to silence. The cold, crisp quiet of the medbay, a frail beeping from one machine, maybe there’s more. The nothingness is deafening, it hurts, and he almost wishes he’d gone amongst the cacophony of the dying planet; just another soul torn to bits with the base.

And then it happens the way it always does: the thoughtless wishes you didn’t want to wish for are the ones that become reality. Ren tries to breathe; a choked, shuddering inhale, and he’s thrown back into chaos. The beeping grows louder, hysterical. Medics rush into the room ( — _he doesn’t know where he is — he doesn’t even know if they’d made it back to the ship —he doesn’t know if Hux —_ )  first one, then a crowd, and they have at him. They shout to each other, muffled voices, each louder than the other, but Ren doesn’t hear words amidst the noise, he barely registers the prick of whatever they’re drugging him with, of whatever they’re taking to run diagnostics. They’re taking him apart, he thinks, when really there’s nothing left to take.

And he ignores it; doesn’t bring himself to care about the outcome, whether he lives or floats back off into oblivion. The medics ask questions, he first hears them as senseless babble, then he makes out the question marks at the end of the sentences, then words. He pretends he doesn’t hear, he just doesn’t want to talk.

He regrets praying for any semblance of chaos to substitute the desolation he’d woken into.

The voices rise, or he thinks they do, and it’s too much; his skull aches from the inside, and it’s worse than the pain rolling off his body in agonizing waves. And then one voice rises above all else and the rest fall silent; the thudding in Ren’s mind falls silent.

He tries to roll his head to the side, his cheek screams in protest and he relents. He stops fidgeting and listens. He wants to close his eyes, or sink through the bed, through the floors, be thrust into the vacuum of space. He doesn’t want to be seen like this. Not by —

“ — General, the extent of the damage to the nerves is still being examined,” a harried medic states, and she tries to sound reassuring, yet all she does is strike a panic in Ren’s gut, ignite a soundless fury in Hux’s.

Hux doesn’t care for her words, he seethes in silence, breathes to collect his bearings and speaks without the smallest inkling of emotion.

“Leave us.”

No one moves, save for the lone medical droid which scampers out the door at the first chance it gets.

“I said, leave us.”

A brave one pipes up, from beside the heart monitor across the room. He’s in charge here, Ren thinks, he’s heard his voice a lot.

“With due respect, General, I believe someone should stay. I ought to oversee — ”

Hux doesn’t wait for the boring details. “You stay. The rest of you get out.”

Ren wishes his legs would respond, that his toes would make the smallest of efforts to move, to help him upright, let him join the line of people making a break for the door. He didn’t want Hux to see him in his current state, but Hux is staring anyway. Not only that, but Hux wants to speak to him. Or stare at him in condescending silence, watch Ren wither under his poisonous gaze.

The medic in the corner pretends not to be there as Hux approaches the bedframe with slow calculated steps, regulation boots echoing against the steel; Ren cracks an eye open and discovers he’s somewhat upright now, his position shifted since the last time he floated awake.

“What a disaster,” Hux drawls almost immediately, and Ren meets his eyes, and forces himself to keep the contact, regardless of the dispassion beneath them. “The grand master of the Knights of Ren, Snoke promised, and this is the half-assed phony I receive in his stead. _Worthless_.”

Ren tears his eyes away and focuses on the ceiling instead. It’s cold, grayish-blue, none too different from Hux’s eyes. A suitable distraction.

“And now he won’t even drop to my lowly level to respond to me. _Me_. Who am I to give orders, after all?”

“I don’t answer to you,” Ren rasps, and he understands his mistake immediately. His throat clenches, the words ache as they scrape past his lips; his voice is better off hidden beneath his mask.

“No, of course you don’t.” Hux doesn’t sit on the chair by the bedside. He’s not going to stoop so low. “Go ahead and venture out on your own. See how far you get. See if you make it off Starkiller before it swallows you whole, with no one there to drag your pitiful wreck of a body to safety. Defeated by an untrained scavenger no less. A nobody. Just like you now, really.”

“You don’t need to be here if the sight of me torments you.”

“I enjoy being right,” Hux quips.

“And what exactly are you right about?”

“I always knew, in whatever part of my consciousness that even bothered to care, that you could never be left to your own devices. The base goes critical and what does the infamous Kylo Ren do? Kills his father in a fit of panic and runs off into the woods. Many thanks for guarding the oscillator. Nice to know you’re good for something.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“And I’m not going to ask,” Hux snaps. “Spare me talk of your metahuman nonsense if you have nothing to show for it. You’re a disgrace to the Force.”

“You _dare_ — ”

Hux interrupts. “Dare what? To criticize your failure? Yes, I do. I followed orders, I did my job to the very best of my extent, and you set off that glowing abomination of yours at the first inconvenience. Just a scared little boy, unprepared, inexperienced, can barely play with his own toys without laying waste to the universe.”

The medic in the corner shuffles, stumbles on something, pretends not to be eavesdropping. His hand hadn’t moved an inch on his data pad since the moment Hux started to speak. At the moment, Hux couldn’t care less.

“What do you have to say for yourself, _Lord Ren_?”

The title is spat like an insult. Ren flinches, first at the words, then at an unexpected twinge of pain in his side.

Hux scoffs at the display.

“Anything? Any explanation for the bright new supernova my obliterated base has created in the stars? Any particular reason you let that girl give you this — ?”

He trails off, reaches over before Ren can intercept his hand, and traces the jagged line of the scar marring Ren’s cheek. The leather of his glove is cold to the touch, more so than usual, it drags across the skin and pulls on the fresh scabs. Ren hisses in pain, tries to recoil, but Hux merely presses his fingers harder, loses himself in blind rage, draws blood in a sudden, uncontrollable rush of anger.

It’s not until the medic intervenes that Hux relents.

“General — ” comes the warning. “Sir, you shouldn’t — do that. He’s lost too much blood as it is. A moment longer and he would’ve bled out.”

Hux curls his lip and pulls his hand away, stares Ren straight in the eye as he delivers the final blow.

“You should have let him,” he snarls, turns and leaves.

The air is colder in his wake, as if the overflux of wrath he’d harbored inside had poured out and spat itself into the room, intermingling with the stale air and clogging Ren’s throat as he struggles to catch a single calm breath.

The medic moves; crosses the room, taps a switch, adjusts a valve, flicks the tip of a syringe as he explains something about blood pressure. All as if Hux had never even made an appearance.

Ren falls asleep to aching scars. Choking, drowning waves of humiliation flood his senses, the steady hum of the heart monitor dulls his mind, pointless words of comfort from the persistent medic push him over the edge of oblivion. He still can’t move, his fingertips still tingle, and again, he’s out like a light.

 

/

 

Hux doesn’t deem him worthy enough of a second audience. It’s unsurprising: Hux had lost everything, and for everything he blamed the Supreme Leader’s attack dog.

The moment Ren gets his legs working, truly and properly; when the throbbing in his head subsides even the smallest amount, he seeks Hux out himself.

He has severe matters to discuss, and no intention of leaving their disagreement with frayed edges, the way Hux had discarded it when he fled the medbay. There was something to be said for hypocrisy — Hux running when his words failed him, then criticizing Ren when he did the same.

Ren turns a corner, the nausea twisting his gut. He wants to throw up as he passes yet another officer, and the officer stares, and Ren feels pathetic and small without the mask, with the brand of failure tearing at his cheek. He scowls back and soaks in the frightened jump the officer fails to hold back.

The ship is overcome with an air of suspense — the calm before the storm. Perhaps after the storm, in this particular case: in the wake of the grand loss to the Order’s cause. The crew wanders without purpose, tending to everyday duties without the glory of the bigger picture to fuel their resolve, and Ren can’t blame them.

And Hux, the unperturbed, level-headed bastard, hardly even flinches when Ren overrides the control panel to his quarters and soundlessly shuffles inside.

“Not your rooms, Ren.”

Hux doesn’t look up from his schematics. He’s already planning something new; he’s always planning something new.

When Ren fails to reply — because he knows these aren’t his rooms, he’s here to see Hux, of course, Hux should know that — the general in question swipes the screen of his pad to black it out and stares up, swivels in his chair to face Ren.

“How may I assist you on this fine day, Lord Ren?”

Ren would take biting insults over the false pleasantry any day.

“Can we talk?”

“We are talking, Ren. Do your senses fail you?”

Ren almost stomps his foot on the ground in annoyance. He clenches his fists, twists them in his robes and walks across the room to perch on the edge of the bed. It’s pitiful, and he tries not to stumble, but he’s still dizzy and Hux doesn’t need to know that.

Hux misinterprets the action.

“I see you’re up and running quite functionally. I’ll have the crew change course.”

Ren stills. “What?”

“Snoke wants to see you,” Hux says, words flippant, trying to gauge any sort of reaction from the other, see how he responds to the news. “Something about finishing your training. Sadly, he didn’t divulge any details.”

“We’re going to him — now?”

“You daft child, did I not say I’ve yet to notify the deck?”

Ren barely registers his fingernails digging bloody crescents into his palms. He’s concerned of what further training entails, integrally frightened of the repercussions of losing the presumably unstoppable base. And Hux sounds like sending Ren off is about as high in his hierarchy as wiping the mud off his boots.

He loses himself in that feeling, whatever it is: Hux’s empty voice, the panic bubbling up from his stomach, threatening to suffocate him from the inside out. Just like that, he’s being given up to Snoke, discarded like a used tissue. He has no control over his lips as they form the words.

“What am I to you?”

Hux frowns — he doesn’t understand the question — then blanches as the meaning locks in place, then snorts at the hesitant sincerity on Ren’s face.

“What do _you_ think?”

Ren doesn’t bother rolling his eyes at Hux’s evasion of the question. They will get nowhere by skirting around the other’s inquiries, and Ren doesn’t want to get nowhere. He wants to know.

“I’m a disappointment to my former family, if they even bother to remember me. I’m a weapon to Snoke. A wild dog to everyone else. They’re all just scared.”

“And me?”

“You were never scared.”

Hux sets his jaw. “Not that. What are you to me? What do you think you are?”

It’s Ren’s turn to frown. “Don’t ask me. I want your answer.” He pauses when Hux says nothing, then: “Cowardice doesn’t suit you, General. Tell me.”

Hux fashions himself a cruel smile, tilts his head and walks away from his chair, towards the viewport windows. He looks away from Ren, his last hope at escaping the burn of Ren’s imploring gaze.

“Are you waiting for me to call you a lover? Some affectionate term to describe that which doesn’t exist?”

It’s enough to fuel Ren’s indignation. “What doesn’t exist?” he demands, but doesn’t stand to face Hux; not yet. He tries to bide his time.

“What you evidently think this is. It isn’t that.”

He quickly fails — shoots to his feet and raises his voice.

“Hux, you fucking _bastard_ , could you stop with your cryptic nuances and say what you mean — say it to my face? You were never afraid — what is there to be afraid of now?”

And Hux obliges, turns, speaks slowly when he does. There’s something wary in his tone but it’s far from fear — far from the kind of gut wrenching agony that comes from terror. Instead it’s detached, almost apprehensive.

“Your attachment is dangerous, Kylo.”

“Attachment,” Ren echoes the word hollowly. It has no meaning, he doesn’t understand the implication, he wants Hux to speak plainly.

“You think I can’t see? Maybe you can’t, as you hid everything beneath that monstrous mask. Maybe you hid it from yourself, too.”

Had Ren had his saber, he’d have lost his patience and taken a swing at Hux — a proverbial warning blow to put a stop to his riddles. Had he his full strength, he’d have wrapped an invisible fist around Hux’s neck and choked the answers from him in a panicked flurry.

He doesn’t have to. Hux keeps going, finally sheds light on the three words he’d held hidden beneath a shroud.

“You love me.”

Ren breathes slowly. He wipes his surprise from his eyes.

“ — and you asked what you are to me. I’ve no doubt that you wanted me to say something akin to your own feelings,” Hux adds, when he understand that Ren is choosing to remain silent. “I do hate to disappoint.”

Ren would try to deny his sentiment, he would try to backtrack over his questions and pretend they never left his mouth. But Hux would see through it, because Hux knows. And suddenly, Ren is furious.

“So all of this this meant nothing to you?”

Hux raises an eyebrow. His eyes are cold: they’re a spire of ice and they’re drilling through Ren’s chest with every word.

“All of what? All of what, Ren? If you can’t differentiate between sex and affection you’re far more immature than I’d thought.”

“Oh, so it’s my fault now?”

“As opposed to whose?” Hux demands.

“This isn’t my doing. I didn’t ask for — I didn’t ask to get _attached_.”

He didn’t ask to fall hard. And now he’s falling, through the cracks in the floors and closing his eyes as the airless vacuum of space crushes his lungs. Funny, how not too long ago he’d wished for it to happen.

“I do apologize, Ren, but I don’t reciprocate the notion. I don’t have time for it. I don’t have a use for it.”

“You can’t say that,” Ren tries to spit, but the words stumble out quiet and disheartened.

“No? Time to break it to you, I suppose — you don’t get a say in what I can and can’t think. You don’t get a say in what I _want_. Or what I don’t want.”

“And what don’t you want?”

Ren doesn’t want to hear the answer.

And at the same time he does: he wants to feel the final stab to his heart. He wants to bleed, he wants to scream, he wants to hit something, and he doesn’t understand how Hux can feel none of it.

“You,” Hux states simply, and the single word weighs nothing to him, weighs too much to Ren. “I don’t want you like that, Kylo.”

“You’re just afraid — ”

“I’m not afraid. I’m determined. There’s something I want to accomplish, something I want to become. I want to shape the galaxy and I can’t make room for attachments and distractions.”

Ren tries to interrupt again. “It’s not a distraction — ”

“No,” Hux agrees. Then: “It’s a weakness. Love is for the weak, and the weak lose wars. I can’t afford another setback.”

“I’m a _setback_?”

Hux scoffs before he can contain it. “Please, Ren. Do try not to take everything so literally. It’s a vice of yours, I’ve noticed.”

“How did this — the Order — how did _us_ — us against the world turn into you against me?”

Ren’s voice is small and shaky and Hux can’t, for the life of him, figure out the legitimacy of the question.

“Don’t be so melodramatic. _Us_. There was never any us. You couldn’t recall one instance we saw eye to eye if I gave you all the time in the universe.”

“It’s that simple?”

Hux closes his mouth, breathes in and breathes out. He drags his eyes across Ren’s face: every crevice, every jagged turn of the pink scar, the skin pulled tight around it. He doesn’t bother trying to unearth a surge of emotion, he knows it doesn’t exist. It _is_ that simple.

“Accept this for what it is, Ren, or we finish it. I won’t string you along against your will.”

And perhaps it’s that last spark of humanity, of empathy, that sends Ren crumbling. He sits back down on the edge of the bed, stares at his hands fold and unfold. He searches for what to say, scours his mind for anything resembling at least some of the vehemence he’d always struggled with containing. Now he finds nothing.

He stands, swaying on the spot.

“We finish it,” he forces himself to say. He doesn’t know why; it’s instinctual, and the decision spills past his slips unbidden.

“Very well,” Hux mutters. “ I — ”

 He starts to say something, but Ren is halfway across the room already, back turned; he’s not listening to explanations and elaborations.

The door slides shut after him and he’s alone in the hall, blessedly empty. The air is cold. It bites at his skin and the want is back; he wants to be left on the snow as the earth tears open under him.

The disagreement is left with frayed edges.

The war wages on.

 


End file.
